Authentic VacationsReviews of authenticvacations.com

I will never book any trip with Authentic Vacations again. Their customer service is lousy, and their idea of a competent tour guide is misleading. We waisted a lot of money for a bad experience. The agent from AV we originally booked our trip to Ireland left the company, and the new agent assigned was useless. Our tour guide in Ireland was awful. He never stopped talking, disregarded guest's request, continued to make mistakes about the sites we were visiting, and kept spewing offensive remarks about politics, gender, and other cultures. We couldn't wait to come home since our trip was such a negative experience. To make things worse the Authentic Vacations never contacted me to inquire about our trip once we returned. Book with caution.

We used Authentic vacations last year for Iceland and Norway. Great trip, (except the Norway tour guide wasn't from Norway and swore Norway didn't have moose! She started looking up things on Google). Last year AV made all the arrangements for us (we paid extra) for the hotel rooms before, between and at the end, transportation from and to the airports too. This year we are planning Spain and Portugal in September and I'm so disappointed! I keep hearing "it's not our trip" apparently we are paying a thousand dollars more per tour for them to book us on another company's tours (Blue Roads)! They wouldn't help with hotel arrangements before and after, told us to get a taxi or uber at the airport/hotel. For what we are paying, the customer service this year is less than desirable. We are on our second travel agent since February. This may be the last time we use them. I'll update this post if need be before, during and after our trip.

Joleen designed an Ireland itinerary for the five of us. The trip was excellent she took care of all the details. We enjoyed our hotels, the museums, and the stops to view landscapes. We saw most of Ireland during our ten-day trip. K. Evans

Booked a 5 day self drive with Authentic Vacations (A.V.) last year. Agent pushed the insurance saying it would cover us if anything arose forcing us to cancel. Fast forward to this year and Covid-19, First agent laid off and we were assigned another agent that we had no relationship with. The EU is closing their boarders to travelers from the US. We called to cancel our trip and found out that A.V. will hold back 20% of the land cost and we also lose out on the $509 travel insurance. What is the purpose of paying for insurance if they don't provide any service. Recommend you find a local travel agent who will better serve their customers.

UPDATED 8/2020: I chose Authentic Vacations because of their great reputation, and "peace of mind" guarantee. COVID19 HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING, CAREFUL! We were booked for 9/2020 13 night trip to the UK, Uh Oh. 3/2020 we contacted our first agent to find she was furloughed 2/2020. Uh Oh. Having already paid Authentic $10K+ we tried rescheduling, NO GO. We then asked for a refund. Our 2nd agent, though cordial, had his hours CUT early 3/2020. After 2 months of many contacts with Authentic and NONE of our $10K back, we tried rebooking for 2021, but the groud tour bus company was not accepting rebookings. Authentic dragged their feet in filing an insurance claim, so after consulting our attorney, we took the claim over ourselves and filed our claim 6/2/2020. Within two weeks we received repayment from the tour bus company, and are filing our claim with American Airlines ourselves. UPDATE 8/2020: American, refunded our claim that we filed ourselves, ONLY because we had a letter from Doctor of husband's medical condition preventing travel. THEN: American sent the money to Authentic's Accounting dept, instead of to us. NO ONE notified us of this credit, and I spent weeks trying to track down our refund!!! Still no go, I am beyond miffed. I just received a thank you note from Authentic, asking for the final payment on our currently scheduled trip in two weeks???? What??? If you plan on working with Authentic or ANY 3rd party, you've added another layer of recourse between you and refunds, should you need them. In the future I will book directly with tour companies and airlines, not because Authentic didn't try or provide a good package, but because they were unable to get any money back for us in a reasonable amount of time.

I worked with Tim on a 10 day trip chauffeur driver for my 84 yr. old clients. They said it was the best trip they have ever taken. Tim was great to work with and so knowledgeable. It was a pleasure to work with him.

We had an amazing 8 day Ireland vacation. We worked closely with our travel advisor, Heather B., to plan every detail of our trip. Heather tailored it perfectly to fit our interests and our desire to meander by car along the coasts to visit the historic, cultural and nature sights of southern Ireland. We stayed at seven lovely B&Bs on the west, south and east coasts. The B&B hosts were wonderfully gracious and welcoming. Heather made dinner reservations or recommendations for each night, which were universally fabulous. We visited many centuries old monasteries, castles, forts and settlements. We toured several wonderful museums. Heather provided us with a Google maps link for each day our travel. The beaches, cliffs, lighthouses and seaside villages along the coasts were delightfully scenic, peaceful and sublime. We drove exactly 1,000 miles on our trip at a very leisurely pace. Highly recommend Authentic Vacations and Heather B. to plan your customized Ireland Adventure.

For our honeymoon/first international trip, working with Authentic Vacations was a huge help! We had two travel agents because our first agent ended up leaving the company a few months before our trip. Diana made all of our arrangements, and answered a lot of questions to ease my worries. My only complaint is that by the time we got our passports and were ready to book our flights, she told us she wouldn’t be back in the office for the next week. When she came back, the airfare went up. Our second travel agent was Lainie. She sent us all of our documents on time and answered more questions for me. We had a great time on our self-guided tour through Ireland. We stayed at two bed and breakfasts, and three hotels. We enjoyed the B&B’s more. Our last hotel, Celbridge Manor, was very stuffy inside and we had to sleep with the window open to air out the room. I would not go back there again. Our driving experience was good. Make sure you take a lot of pictures of your rental car before you leave the parking lot. We had a few damages on our car that were either not listed, or only listed as minor scratches. Also, our GPS didn’t work very well so we ended up only using maps on my cellphone with Verizon. Overall I recommend working with a travel agent for an international trip to ensure you get the most of your vacation.